Burlaki on the Hudson

These two pictures could be mistaken for being of the same child, but I assure you they are not. Can you guess who is on the left and who is on the right?
 

    

Pictures

I’ve been back in the States and off UK payroll for nearly a year and a half. But because of the quirks of the UK taxation calendar, I ended up having had worked part of the 2009-10 tax year in the UK, for which the returns were due this coming Monday.

I sat down today to file that return, somewhat dreading that I’ll find my taxes underpaid and will have to fork over a few pounds sterling. In my previous years, I’ve never had to pay more than a few hundred with my return, but nowadays, with my remaining UK-based funds being largely symbolic, it would involve a scramble of wiring money over and making a payment right on the deadline. (I’ll be honest: I completely forgot that I still had to do it this year; I could have missed the deadline altogether if not for a friendly reminder from the Her Majesty Revenue and Customs, which arrived in my mailbox yesterday, having been mailed on December 16th.)

As I described in this post a year ago, the entire tax self-assessment process takes maybe fifteen minutes online, with a return as simple as mine – here’s how much I earned, here’s how much they withheld, no other deductions or increases, tell me how much I owe. But when I clicked on the final screen button to take me to the calculation, I was very pleasantly surprised.

It turns out that the British government owes me a neat four-digit refund. Sterling.

The calculation showed that I should have had a considerably smaller tax amount withheld from my paycheck than in fact was. Given that I worked for roughly the third of the tax year in the UK, I see two plausible explanations. First, my withholding may have been at the rate aimed at my entire yearly salary, and not commensurate with the final amount that was three times smaller. Second, tax brackets were adjusted in the UK within last year or so; my partial-year income may have qualified me for a lower bracket than when the salary was paid.

In any case, I just had a small bag of money fall into my lap from the sky. No complaints here.

Expat Topic

… is that I am suddenly cool again for my older children to hang out with Dad a bit. As in this case of watching a full-length movie trailer.
 

Chronicles, Pictures

Why do I not need an iPad? Let me count the ways…

I listen to music only when I am on the move. Driving or walking. When I am otherwise stationary, say, on the bus during my commute, I prefer to read. And I do not listen to music and read at the same time. Given these parameters, a good old iPod – and mine is really old, the first chunky white-and-silver model there ever was – is a lot more convenient as compared to a gadget that one has to carry in a bag.

I do not want to read books on a glossy LED screen. Or hold a heavy brick in my hands when I read. As I said on previous occasions, I am rather happy with a dedicated electronic reader that takes advantage of eInk to go easy on my eyes. The reader might be a narrow-purposed gadget, but it does its job really well, and I’m not about to give up the superior experience for arguable convenience of having an all-in-one-device.

I am an indifferent gamer. There is simply no time in my life available for computer games (infrequent Wii sessions with Kimmy excepted) and I’ve never been too heartbroken about that either. If I am faced with idle time on my hands, I’d rather read.

I went through a period of time several years ago when I carried a laptop with me every day so that I could watch videos during my commute. There is definitely a modicum of value in having the ability to carry videos along and watch them on a reasonably-sized screen. But watching movies piece-meal is not my thing – and for all of the length of my commute, I do not spend enough time on the bus to watch any given movie in its entirety. Streaming most recent episodes for a couple of shows that other family members are not interested in could be a proposition for killing time during commute, except streaming video over 3G network neither works well nor fits into the monthly data transfer allotment available with an iPad. I have little interest in re-watching previous seasons of shows that I already have seen, and even less interest in shows that I have not seen. Anyway, I’d rather read.

You did notice the common thread, did you? Electronic book reader is the gadget ideally suited for my needs when it comes to entertaining myself during periods of idleness. Why would I need a tablet computer with all its bells and whistles, especially when it happens to be inferior at the function I deem the most important…

Email and internet – that’s why.

The corporate overlords have been tightening the screws for a long time now, and both my office PC and my BlackBerry nowadays are blocking access to practically everything I want to check during the day – blogs, personal email accounts, social networking sites. I come home late at night, have dinner, spend some time with the kids, and then retreat to my basement study to catch up on stuff.

Or take holidays. During the week in Florida I was pretty much unplugged all the time. That could be nice on many types of vacations, but not on a trip where I had plenty of time all to myself between my 10-year-old’s bedtime and my own… Yep, I read a lot.

Long story short, I decided I needed to catch up with modern times by equipping myself with something that would keep internet always at the ready for me. I first considered a smartphone, a Droid or some such, but small screen and typing with thumbs were among things that stopped me. Plus, a simple calculation showed that adding a new cell phone with generous data transfer allowance to our existing plan would mean higher monthly charges than the iPad 3G monthly plan. In a couple of years, that difference would negate the current difference in cost between a Droid and an iPad.

And when I found out that I could get myself an iPad with an 18-months credit-as-cash deal, it became a no-brainer.

I’m not going to do any product reviews. It will take me some time to ascertain whether the gadget will prove to be as useful – or, to be completely honest, necessary – as I’m hoping it will be. It will obviously cut into my commute book-reading time. But it should free up time at home.

But after a few days of playing around with it, I am already pretty happy with the new-found ability to remain connected when I otherwise couldn’t in the past. On-the-bus test will be first performed tonight…

Gadgets

My Russian-speaking audience will enjoy this impromptu performance by Becky of the well-known New Year’s song, which she literally learned in an hour or so prior to going to her New Year’s party. Those of you who do not speak Russian may still be able to appreciate the fact that Becky started playing guitar only a few months ago.
 

Family Videos, Music

I hope that every one of you had smashing time greeting the New Year!

We did our usual thing with a group of our good friends, gathering around the table, eating, drinking, laughing around, eventually moving on to karaoke and movie-watching. We did this in practically the same company for years before moving off to England, and picked it up last year on our first New Year’s Eve back in the States. We will probably be celebrating this way for years to come.

Celebration lasted well into the morning, and then we picked it up after just a few hours of sleep with a post-celebration breakfast, followed up by more communal movie-watching. The movies we watch on these occasions are predominantly the ones that we have seen in the past and know quite well, providing for often-hilarious background commentary by every member of the party.

Good times! Hopefully, the year will be similarly filled with joy.

The year that ended was obviously an extraordinary one, our first full year back in the US after having lived in Europe for a while. We brought another child into the world, and that by itself marks the year as special. As with any other year, there were ups and downs, good happenings and things we may want to try to forget, so as is customary at this time of the year, we are hoping that the coming year will only be better. May your 2011 be better than 2010 as well!

I finished the year with two consecutive weeks of vacations, the first of which I spent entirely at home. It was the first such occasion in 3 years, but that previous one was when Natasha travelled to Russia without me, and I was playing housedad for the kids. This time around, I endeavoured to help Natasha at home, but mostly spent time in my study working on various computer issues. Sad, really. I never liked being type-casted as a computer geek (even though I am definitely one). And one my week free of work all I did was work on computers.

The second week, however, I took Kimmy to Orlando. She has not been to Disney parks since she was about 3 years old, and a family of our closest friends were spending a week in Orlando, so the stars aligned somewhat for me to get out of the house and focus on making my 10-year-old happy. We managed to visit 7 different parks, including all of the major Disney World parks, the Sea World, Universal’s Islands of Adventure with its newest Harry Potter-themed attractions, and the Kennedy Space Center. Each of them was impressive in their own right, even if we had to contend with enormous crowds of people. Going to Disney during school holidays is always a testing proposition. (Have you ever heard of a park closing for new admissions in the morning on account of being full? On the day of our arrival to Orlando, we fell victims to this arrangement at the Magic Kingdom, which we reached around noon. We were advised to come back after 2pm.)

No matter how well you plan and execute your visits to amusement parks, at the busiest times of the year you cannot avoid bumping into impossibly long waits at popular attractions. The FastPass system at Disney parks helps to mitigate it somewhat, but we had several occasions of coming to get the FastPass fairly early in the morning, and still getting it only for a late-afternoon time-slot. Plus, in a number of cases, even a FastPass does not get you directly to the attraction; you bypass most of the line, but still have to endure a noticeable wait afterwards (as, for instance, we had at the Toy Story Midway Mania ride at the Disney’s Hollywood Studios).

Your child may think it worthwhile no matter what, but I tend to dislike spending anything over 40 minutes in line for a ride that lasts all of 3 minutes itself. And with such long waits, there is practically no chance to go on the same ride for the second time during the day.

Which brings us to the excellent choice Kimmy and I made in regards to the Magic Kingdom. After our first-day fiasco (we went to the Animal Kingdom instead then), we decided to go there late in the afternoon and stay for as long as we could (it closes at 1am). We had multi-day “hopper” passes, so the sting of spending the same amount of money for “half of a day” as we would have spent for a full day was not as painful. We targeted less than a dozen rides as musts – and managed to get on every single one of them, with none of the waiting periods lasting over my arbitrary limit of 40 minutes and only one FastPass acquisition. There were still tons of people at the park, but between 5-6pm the crowds started to get thinner. Some of the most popular rides still showed 60-minute waits as late as 9pm, but practically none had a wait of more than a few minutes after the fireworks display at 10pm.

My hands-down most favorite amusement park ride in the world is the Splash Mountain (sorry, the daredevils in the audience – I don’t do roller-coasters). We kept putting it off as one of our last targets, and it paid off spectacularly. At about 10:50pm, we basically walked onto the attraction without a single second of waiting and got into the boat to ride. After getting off, we immediately walked around to the entrance and got on it for the second time. When that second ride was complete, I noticed that no one was even waiting to get on at that moment, and asked the girl attendant if we could just stay in our boat and go on one more time. She waved us through. We probably could have done it the fourth and fifth and tenth time if we chose, but we decided that three times was just the right quantity.

Kimmy now professes that the Splash Mountain is her favorite ride in the world as well.

She had the greatest time, and I enjoyed the trip as well.

The added bonus was that we entirely missed the big snowstorm in the Northeast. Natasha and Becky managed to clear our driveway with an important assist from a good neighbor with a snowblower – a job that would be mine otherwise. Monday’s commute – and my walk to the bus – is still likely to be horrible. Sidewalks are not cleared, piles of snow are filling up shoulders which buses use during rush hour. I’ll chance it on Monday, but may elect to work remotely for the rest of the week if it gets too intolerable.

Let’s see how the New Year is going to greet me.

Chronicles